Burmese army using 10-year-olds to replace deserters, says report

Burma's military, facing a gathering manpower crisis, is forcibly recruiting children as young as 10 into its ranks, according to a report today by Human Rights Watch.

Civilian brokers and recruiters for Burma's 400,000-strong armed forces receive cash payments for each child they sign up, according to the international pressure group. Battalion commanders under pressure to keep numbers up and facing high rates of desertion often turn a blind eye when the recruits evidently violate the minimum age requirement of 18.

Military recruiters target underage recruits at bus and train stations, threatening arrest if they refuse to join. Some children are beaten into making them "volunteer". The number of child soldiers is estimated to run to thousands.

Recruiters often falsify enlistment papers to register the children as 18, according to the study, Sold to be Soldiers: The Recruitment and Use of Child Soldiers in Burma. "The brutality of Burma's military government goes beyond its violent crackdown on peaceful protesters," said Jo Becker, the report's author and Human Rights Watch's children's advocate. "Military recruiters are literally buying and selling children to fill the ranks of the Burmese armed forces."

Burma's 30-odd armed groups - rebels and those allied to the regime - also use children in their ranks, though some of the underage recruits volunteer because their families cannot afford to support them. Some groups - like the Karen National Liberation Army and the Karenni Army - have reduced child numbers.

Others, such as the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army and the United Wa State Army, continue to use children, sometimes imposing recruitment quotas on villages. Families often send younger members in order to retain older and more productive members.

However, Human Rights Watch maintains that the Burmese military remains by far the biggest offender despite a decade of criticism by the UN. The army has been singled out in four consecutive reports by the secretary-general for flouting international laws on child soldiers.

The report highlights the account of a boy who told how he was forcibly recruited aged 11 even though he was only 4ft 3in tall and weighed only five stone.Another former soldier, Aung Saw, recalled how he was forced into combat."I can't remember how old I was the first time in fighting - about 13," he said. "That time we walked into a Karenni ambush and four of our soldiers died. I was afraid because I was very young and tried to run back, but [the] captain shouted: 'If you run back I'll shoot you myself'."